Skip to content
worldfires
DZ · Algeria · →

Ouled Hellal fire, 8 July 2020 أولاد هلال · Ouled Hellal

Out · last detection 12 Jul 2020, 13:26 UTC

The fire started on 8 July 2020 in Ouled Hellal, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 236 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 28th largest in Médéa since 2016 (of 55 with a page). Number 123 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.

Burnt area
236ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
8 Jul 2020 – 11 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
8 Jul
2020
Heat detections
12
in a single hotspot: 168 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
844MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

12 Jul 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Jul11 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

8912

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

38°high
39km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.3 mm on 12 Jul.

This area had burned before

8% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 18 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Ouled Hellal أولاد هلال 3,367 inhabitants · 4.4 km from the town where it started
    237 ha reached on 8 Jul
    1.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

  • Mixed forest53 %
  • Other natural land40 %
  • Agricultural areas5.1 %
  • Broadleaved forest1.3 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
8 Jul 36.7 °C 19 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 Jul 38.0 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
10 Jul 34.4 °C 16 % 38 km/h 2.7 mm High 27
11 Jul 36.1 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 39
12 Jul after 34.4 °C 29 % 32 km/h 3.3 mm Moderate 16

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 1 Jul 2020
After · 18 Jul 2020

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 10 July 2020 the air beside the fire reached 21 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak21 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1030 µg/m³
6789101112131415
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 12Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Algeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ouled Hellal fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 8 July 2020 and 11 July 2020: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 236 hectares (2.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ouled Hellal (237 ha, 1.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 4.4 km of Ouled Hellal. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Algeria (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Emergency number: 14 · 1021

Satellite cross-check

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 14 · 1021.

Where this data comes from

The perimeter and land cover come from the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), measured on MODIS and Sentinel-2 imagery and published under CC BY 4.0. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from each country’s official figure.